Jesus knew he was going to be crucified; he was actually crucified. Peter stood up in Jerusalem and told the people there — who at first thought he was drunk for shouting in public like that — that Jesus was crucified. For Peter, that’s a significant change — the kind of change we all really need to get involved with. It’s not a small change of mind to go from a guy who wanted Jesus to stop talking about going to Jerusalem to be killed to being a guy who wanted the city of Jerusalem to stop what it was doing — in very proper religious solemnity — and face up to the fact that this Jesus was crucified. It was a massive change. And Peter knew it required these people who were calling on the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to get changed as well.
After he got changed like that, Peter said: “Men of Israel, listen up: Jesus, from Nazareth, who worked out things we can only explain as signs of God — things he did in public, because you yourselves saw them — this Jesus was crucified and killed by you because that’s what God wanted.”
We don’t often think of it that way, do we? We read Stephen King’s The Green Mile and we think of Jesus being like John Coffey, an inmate on death row who was wrongly accused and tragically executed, and that somehow for Jesus things went terribly wrong that day. And in one sense, they did: because even Peter knew that Jesus was the son of David, the Messiah, and he deserved worship, not humiliation and punishment and death. Back when he was telling Jesus what kind of Messiah he was supposed to be, he thought it was simply wrong that Jesus should die for any reason. But at that moment, after the crucifixion, Peter was unafraid to tell all of Jerusalem, “This Jesus was crucified because that’s what God wanted.”
That’s not the end of what Peter said that day, and we’ll get back to that in a minute. But I think that we have to admit something to ourselves since we know we are like Oprah Winfrey. We have to admit that often, we don’t care about what God wants.
I think there are two reasons for this. For us, God isn’t real in the way we see ourselves as real. I have no idea if you have muddled through any of the self-help books Oprah has proffered through the years, but one thing is glaringly obvious in the religion of all of them: her philosophy is centered on the fact that she is a real person with real needs who can take real action. Anything other than that which might intrude on her choices and her self-actualization cannot be real in the same way. Because we are like her, we do the same thing to God — we make him into something abstract that might be true, but cannot be useful. For God to say something like, “be subject to one another,” or “mature believers should love and teach immature believers, and the immature believers should listen,” is unthinkable. It causes us to say, “yeah but …” in a thousand different ways. And while we might say that we believe in one God, the Lord and giver of Life, we treat Him more like the Prime Directive in Star Trek — a pre-eminent ideal which we say we order our lives around, but in daily practice we do what seems right to us, and nobody ever calls us on it.
We are exactly like Oprah, dear reader. Even those of us who are very conservative Christians, very serious about the historical and factual nature of the Bible, have a problem. While the Bible may be real, and we have all the copies of it we can manage in our homes, the Jesus it talks about and the God he is begotten by, and the Spirit who proceeds from them, are not. They are certainly not as real as a police officer we see in the rear view mirror — because for him, as soon as we even think about him, the traffic speed changes from 55 to 40 in a 40 MPH zone.
But why are we like this? I think it has to do with our second problem, which is that we have a lot of stuff. My wife and I used to live in a great place among fantastic people, and we moved there so we could raise our children there. Before moving there, we had plenty of stuff. When life did to us what it has done to many of you, and we found we had to move in order to continue putting food on the table, we found that we had accumulated far more stuff than we imagined. During those years when we thought we were just getting by, we were in fact living high on the hog, way above the mud line on the economic sow — and it was manifest in a collection of junk which two garage sales and a retail liquidation sale could not get rid of.
The problem with having a lot of stuff is that it takes a lot of discipline and fortitude just to throw things away. Just as an example, I have cases of greeting cards in my garage which we could not liquidate when we closed our business. Cards and envelopes — by the case, just colors on paper which are apparently not even worth 50¢ each. And yet, rather than throw them out, there they are in my garage.
What would it cost me, really, just to throw them away? I will never use them all — there are not enough days left in my life to use them all. But rather than toss them out and make room for, well, my car to go in the garage, I keep them sitting there. And sitting there. And sitting there.
See: those cards are real — I can touch them, and therefore I can imagine what I can use them for. Because they are actually in my garage, I think about them as things which either can cause me to take action, or things that I can do something to. They make sense to me because they belong to me, and they will do what I want them to do insofar as I want to keep track of them. You just can’t imagine what it would take for me to throw away those cards. I certainly can’t imagine what it would take.
And I am embarrassed to admit it: that’s just about cleaning out the garage, and being able to put my car away where any sensible person wants to put his car. Imagine what it would take for someone to spell it out for me that I should do something more substantive for an invisible God which would cost me more than a couple of boxes of greeting cards with zero resale value.
You know: me, the guy who is allegedly qualified or “gifted” to write on a blog like this for you so that you can garner some spiritual profit. It’s obvious that God is not real for me, and that I have too much stuff. How about you?
January 30th, 2010 | 4:02 am | #1
So elemental and profound and convicting. How to make God as real to me as the computer I am now using. I’m thinking prayer and imagination will be involved. Thank you for your candor.
January 30th, 2010 | 7:28 am | #2
I try to understand that God is real and present and working in my life. But I do get caught up in having stuff–especially books–and wanting what others have.
However, I see that many of those people who have a lot of stuff (members of my family included) but who have no knowledge of God are profoundly unfulfilled. Even with my minor glimpse and taste of God, I know without a doubt that I have many more spiritual riches and comfort and peace and joy (note I am not saying happiness) than the unbelievers I know with lots of stuff.
January 30th, 2010 | 10:27 am | #3
Getting rid of things, even things that make me manifestly unhappy, feels like dying.
January 30th, 2010 | 12:11 pm | #4
Exactly. When the eyes of our hearts are opened and we see this Person we describe as “God” as the Reality He truly is … We. Will. Be. Changed. It will make all the difference between our theology as mere dry theory from words on a page to living, breathing, multidimensional. The difference in knowing ABOUT God, and KNOWING God.
Consider these verses:
The Lord Jesus said, “and this IS eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ who Thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)
Thus it is eternal life itself.
But we can’t produce it on our own.
The LORD God says, “And I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart” Jer. 24:7.
We can’t generate it, but God can give it. Do we pray for it with our whole heart?
“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me; and I will listen to you, and you will seek Me and find Me, when your search for Me with all your heart.” Jer. 29:12-13.
What riches await if we do!
“Call to Me, and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things which you did not know.” Jer. 33:3.
Pray for the ability to know Him, desire it, pester Him for it (reverently), and He will make Himself known. You will understand Scripture like you never have before. Your prayers in the quiet times will become not cries to God for blessings, but rather ways He will communicate with you. IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND AND TRANSFORM YOUR VERY NATURE.
He is far more real than anything you can see, or touch, or hear, because He is the source of it all.
Forgive the length, but Isaiah, Moses, Peter, Thomas, and Paul, were not who they once were when they experience Him in His reality as God. He has been gracious enough to allow me to experience Him, and I am being changed. Not easily, but more like Him. Not boastfully, but because it is so amazing.
He wants this so much He died for it, and He is right right there, beside you, inside you, waiting to hear you so the Relationship He intended can blast off!
Blessings.
January 30th, 2010 | 2:31 pm | #5
Have another garage sale, Cent. Mark the cards free. People are amazing when it comes to taking things they don’t need when it is free. They take things even when the don’t know what they are. It is almost as amazing as people who buy what they don’t need, or don’t know how to use, but think they might in the future.
I know your cards are left-overs from commercial venture, go here and there, buy, sell, prosper, et cetera, and I appreciate the separation anxiety that comes with thinking the but what ifs. But just like any virgin bungy-jumper you gotta take that first step. Once you commit, its over. You might have residual anxiety dreams. The grief/loss Kubler-Rossian patterns are essentially typical, though not necessarily present in all. If they manifest, they can easily be handled with time and/or Zoloft.
One thing that I might say about our view of God is that we really do think of him as real- when we need him- which is why we keep him in a box in the garage just in case. It’s like that mounty showing up in the rear view, we don’t have to see him in the conscious mind always. The law is there and we know it as real. I mean, those greeting cards are real greetings and would do what they are by nature if signed sealed and delivered. At one time there was real need, and real payoff from them, so just like an insurance policy, keeping them around provides some sense of a secure future. But just like those cards we don’t need God everyday, or in the same way as we once did, or at least he takes a seat in back. I mean, how many times do we say “Greetings, Earthman?” Once, right? But, just in case… we cannot bring ourselves to jetison him, because just in case… We know that he works, we know that he did once, and because of that we believe there is good reason to keep him around for the future, or we would throw him out. He’s real, but like a vase, where there are no flowers, there is no need to keep water in it. Then again, God is like that thing your wife keeps getting out though you’ve put it away a thousand times. You’re not sure if it is her, really, or your mind undergoing atrophic decline.
That brings us to that fine distinction between needing to put food on the table or keeping up the fascade of the Jonesian paradigm. I have some really good steaks at the bottom of the freezer. They’re real food, better than the cheep reheatable burritos in the brightly colored package on top that have suppressed the knowledge of the steaks. My only problem is that, beside the fact that convenience has replaced my love for cooking and good food, others don’t really care, either. They used to be impressed and it would be okay if I fired the grill again. They express it just that way “sure, why not.” But I get this feeling, what if I got all excited about the past again, tastied-up those steaks but no one came to dinner? What if they were too harried, burrito-minded? Would I grill just for just me, knowing they would not come to eat? Or, would I just leave those steaks there, safe and secure, to be pulled out only in cases of a desire to dress up for the diletante hunger of visiting dignitaries? Whatever. The steaks are still there. They’ll remain what they are, at least until I have eaten my way through the rest of the frozen section.
Riches and ease, do tend to make us lazy. And, it is not that they have become an idol, firstly, but rather a euphoric, and as that, a replacement for the satisfaction of the real thing. It is not that we have abandoned the Lord, and it doesn’t even cross our minds to throw him out. It is just that we do not care that he has become just one of a zillion other cards stored in boxes in the garage that seeminly supply the same sensate relief.
I have books. I’ve gone through them twice since moving in here. And even though I know that many of them I will never read again, all that I thought I would use for authorial reference in the future when I wrote my first tome, it now being the future, still take up room I could use for other things. (Like tools that I like to watch rust.) The likelihood of them ever being translated from phantasm to flesh is as faded as the Pampers cardboard that houses them. My youngest is now fourteen, yet those books remain in spaces better used.
All that to say- pyro, cent, pyro. Fire-sale dem cards if you can’t give em away. Use em as fuel. At least they will have found their natural state and you will have been warmed physically and emotionally by them.
Now, about that gifted thing. There is probably a lot of room just waiting to be openned up if you’d just clean out the attic. I’m just saying. A man who fanatasizes, comes to poverty, ya know, so write them thoughts out of your mind. And if they don’t sell… pyro. A man’s strength is not in many boxes of cards, or many talents. The catharsis of transparent confession is as taking a simple physic. But don’t make a practice of it lest your insides be your outsides and your friends be forced to choose sides.
Nonetheless, you really do know how to tell the thoughts which lurk in others’ craniums. But, I don’t believe that God is not real for you. Just that you’re like us; your own selfish pig.
January 30th, 2010 | 4:06 pm | #6
I am in the process of doing the same sort of thing. There is a wonderful change that happens when you decide to live life much more simply.
I even got the teenager agreeing that not having TV is a GOOD thing.
Frank – BEFORE you light that match….find some churches who have real deacons and offer them up to use for their ministry to the members of their churches. Those cards could cheer lots of lonely souls.
January 30th, 2010 | 4:41 pm | #7
I often don’t throw stuff out because if I do, I’m admitting that I didn’t need it to begin with, yet spent God’s money on it. Ouch.
Our family’s livelihood has for years been funded almost entirely by the high-tech industry, and not even the industry that produces useful tools like Quicken or Rosetta Stone, but stuff so ethereal that it’s sold around themes like virtual and cloud computing. My husband and I were talking recently about the problems with a society that embraces the modern magic of technology with such abandon, but denies the reality of a personal, supernatural God who is with us and loves us.
January 30th, 2010 | 7:20 pm | #8
Part of the struggle for me is discerning between “the stuff I accumulate but don’t need, stuff that is weighing me down,” and “the stuff that serves as necessary tools for me to do the work that God has given me to do,” and also “the stuff that I don’t need but gives me pleasure and joy.”
It’s not an easy distinction. I have a LOT of books… more than I will ever read. However, I teach writing and literature, and I write, so a lot of them are reference books… and sometimes you don’t know when you’re going to need a particular book until you do need it. I’ve also realized that having books on hand that I have read and benefited from (even if I am not going to read them again) enables me to lend them to others, again at the spur of the moment. These are good things to be able to do. Yet, do I also get possessive about the books? Definitely. If I start admiring the shelves simply for the “having” of the books, or if I get anxious about “what if I don’t get such-and-such book back that I lent to someone,” then I’ve gone wrong.
For me at least, the question that helps me see if I’m doing OK is, “Could I give this away?” If the answer is no, I am probably clinging to it. The more I give things away, the more I find it possible to sit lightly to the things that I do have, and to enjoy them for what they are, gifts from God.
January 30th, 2010 | 10:23 pm | #9
As the one who wrote this, let me suggest to the reader that if this piece makes you think about how much stuff you have, you have missed the point that our stuff, little and much, distracts from the God who gave us all good things.
January 31st, 2010 | 1:27 am | #10
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But does our stuff necessarily always distract?
I would say that it’s at least possible for the things that we have to direct our attention toward God. For instance, if I am reminded by my coffee cup to be grateful to God for providing me with food and even with simple pleasures like that cup of coffee, then I would say that the cup, rather than a distraction, has been a reminder to direct my attention to Him.
That’s why I thought it was worthwhile to reflect on how we relate to our stuff… I’m not sure that it all falls into the same category or has the same effect spiritually.
On a more practical level, if thinking about my stuff makes me realize that I have too much of it, or spend too much on it, and that prompts me to give stuff away, or give money away, so that other people can have the stuff they need to be warm and fed and sheltered… wouldn’t that be a good thing?
January 31st, 2010 | 1:34 am | #11
“Imagine what it would take for someone to spell it out for me that I should do something more substantive for an invisible God which would cost me more than a couple of boxes of greeting cards with zero resale value.”
“Or, would I just leave those steaks there, safe and secure, to be pulled out only in case of a desire to dress up for the diletante hunger of visiting dignitaries?”
We all sin in many ways, and in all ways deny him our full obedience because we think of anything as our stuff…
Yes, counting the cost is much more than quantity. Got that. Still, most of us really don’t deal with possibilities well. It is possible the Lord will come back tonight, or at least require an accounting tonight.We deal for the most part in the immediacy of the present circumstance barely able to hold our heads above the waves, rarely keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus. We pray lead us not into temptation, yet we find that doubt plagues us because there are those waves lapping around us, and that more than the cost of discipleship is our focus. At times though, we catch a break and relflect upon the fact that it is our kicking and flailing that keeps the waves moving long after the winds have died down.
When Jesus asks of us to count the cost, the reality is we don’t know what that means, nor does he tell us. The requirement is to take that first step. It doesn’t matter if we know what, where, or when the payment will be demanded. We have this promise, and faith that he will never leave nor forsake us. We know also that the strength is not ours. When Jesus told the disciples he would go to Jerusalem and die, Peter said he too would go and all the disciples joined in agreement. Jesus said to them, “Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of? No! But you will.” We are commanded to count the cost, take up the cross and follow, but in the end it always remains that, “when you are old, another will provide what you need and take you where you do not want to go.”
The final analysis is we can’t count the cost because we don’t know the cost. What the Lord asks is that we do. That is the mystery of the faith. Psalm 119: not that David could ever do what was commanded, and he knew that, still he hid the word in his heart. That is the working of faith, isn’t it, even your obedience so that we work it out in the fear of the Lord because he is working it in us to both will and to do?
It is true we have too much. And at times we have too little. Both can become stumbling blocks if we look to what we can or cannot do in and of ourselves as the mark of who we are. Our salvation and our sanctification are in Christ for Christ is the cost and compared to that we are all paupers, even the richest of us.
February 4th, 2010 | 6:55 pm | #12
I have been playing the Unload Stuff theme in variations to people seeking my financial counsel over the last couple of years. Cars, houses, stuff that we bought at the peak of the economy often have to go so that we can focus on what we can really afford.
Now God has brought me to a place where I am living for a year in a smaller place. My goal is to do it as simply as I can bear. Some of it was hard in the beginning, but it has gotten easy pretty quickly. I am finding that it’s not as hard for me to adjust as it is for others around me. My mother still has trouble understanding why I am not aggravated about the stuff that isn’t currently with me and my lack of concern that I ever get it back.
I am thankful for the opportunities it has provided for me to talk about God and why the stuff just isn’t as important to me as it used to be.
February 5th, 2010 | 12:23 pm | #13
[...] I don’t even read this blog regularly, and I found this post by Frank Turk over at Evangel to be enormously helpful. He talks about how even as committed Christians we struggle with treated Jesus as “real,” and it’s high time we admitted it to ourselves. [...]
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